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Science on Tap: Beauty is in the Eye of the Anatomizer

Science on Tap is a monthly science café in Philadelphia for anyone who is interested in getting together with other people to discuss a range of engaging science topics.

It's held at National Mechanics, a relaxed, convivial bar in Old City, and features a brief, informal presentation by a scientist or other expert followed by lively conversation.

Presented by Chemical Heritage Foundation.

We sometimes talk about beautiful bodies today, but we are rarely referring to their innards. Not so for early nineteenth century anatomists, for whom beauty was a concept central to their science, often revealing truthfulness of a theory or anatomical drawing. Sir Charles Bell, one such anatomist, saw anatomy and art as closely related subjects. He taught anatomy to artists as well as to surgeons at his Great Windmill Street School of Anatomy, in London; illustrated all of his own anatomical texts; and wrote a treatise for artists on the use of anatomy in depicting the human form, Essays on the Anatomy of Expression in Painting. As surprising as the close relationship he envisioned between science and art might seem in our modern and fragmented world, a third unlikely element, religion, helped to solidify connections across what we now regard as separate disciplines.

Speaker: Carin Berkowitz is broadly interested in the intersections of science and medicine in the late Enlightenment and early nineteenth century and in the place of pedagogy in medical science. She was the recipient of the American Association for the History of Medicine’s 2010 Shryock Medal and was selected to act as guest editor for a special issue of the Bulletin of the History of Medicine on objects, images, and anatomy. Berkowitz is currently working on two projects—one a series of articles on the roles of visualization and sensation in making anatomical knowledge (two of which have now been published), and the other a book manuscript on the pedagogical spaces that defined late Enlightenment medical science in Britain. As director of the Chemical Heritage Foundation’s Beckman Center, Berkowitz works with CHF fellows and Philadelphia-area historians of science to continue to develop CHF as a center for independent research and scholarly community. Berkowitz received a B.A. from Johns Hopkins University in 2001 and a Ph.D. in science and technology studies from Cornell University in 2010.

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